Chinese Astrology: Qi Men Dun Jia

Qi Men Dun Jia

By Hu Xuezhi

Part 1
What is Dunjia?
Why Dunjia be Used for Divination?
Basic Background
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

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Part 1

What is Dunjia?

Qi Men Dun Jia (or Qimendunjia) is one of the three most powerful oracles–Tai Yee, Liu Ren and Qi Men—to know both good luck and bad luck in aspects of time and space(direction). Tai Yee is used to divine the big events that happen with contries, such as earthquake, big hurricanes, massacre, natural disasters, etc. Qi Men is generally used for military action and take what strategic methods in ever-changing battle field. Liu Ren is mostly used for divining the general daily events which means it is close to our daily life.

Qi means mysterious or strange in usual, but here, it means valuable or holy. Men means a gate, and Dun means hidden or escaped (to make hidden), and Jia is the first one of ten stems, which is considered as the most sacred in this method.

All the three oracles use very special chart to divine and give conclusion. Yes, all of them cannot do without Heavenly stems, earthly branches, Ho drawing, Luo Drawing, Eight Trigrams, Emblematic elements and divine number, etc.

Dunjia can be divided into Year School Dunjia, Month School Dunjia, Day School Dunjia and Time School Dunjia in terms of the time. In terms of reasoning methods it should be divided into Line-Up Palace Dunjia and Jump-in-Palace Dunjia.

Here we introduce Time School Dunjia, Line-Up Palace Dunjia.

People may ask when the Dunjia came into presence and why it existed. Nowadays many people believe Dunjia originated from milatary force arrangements in the battle field and such statements gained wide approval in the scholar circle.

In the very old book The Song from Old Fishing Man carried the following story:

XuanYuan Emperor fought a fierce battle with Shi You without results for many years. In a dream he dreamed Heaven gave him an oracle and XuanYuan paid respect in a sacrifice platform and practiced such arts latter and got a final success soon after. He ordered maliatary man Feng Hou to write down the arts in words and that was the beginning of Dunjia.

Also, it was Spring and Warring Times when the so many states fought endless battles to occupy territory and there was enough demand for application of such arts.

Also the book Arts of War carried similar words concerning the theory of Dunjia. Yet, most people don’t understand the meaning exactly till now.

In Three-Dynasty Times the famous military counsellor Zhu Ge Liang applied Eight Trigram Arrangement in the battle field and won many times of success.

In Dun Jia(or Dunjia) theory, we use a kind of direction chart called Pan, which is drawed as a square divided into nine blocks( 3 x 3. eight directions and centre ). In each directional block, one of the eight gates is positioned. We put away Jia(because of its holiness) and use other nine stems to put them into Dun Jia Pan chart at first, and after several process of making, Jia comes into the Pan chart from one of the eight gates. And that’s why this method is called Qi Men Dun Jia.

Later due to the wide application of Dunjia this divination approach gradually broke its own boundary and gained application in disease diagnosis, business desicion, agricultural divination, etc.

Why Dunjia be Used for Divination?

Any divination approaches, whatever forms they assume, are models set up to imitate the social society, the nature and the universe, etc. Dunjia is a mathematic and physical model set up by incorporating heaven aspect, earth aspect, human aspect and unexpected aspect, the time elements and space elements. There are basic nine Yang Dun Ju and nine Yin Dun Ju which provide us a dynamic unified model to imitate all transformations and changes for universal things. Therefore it can be used to divine the society, nature, individual life time or all which stays out of human’s reasoning ability. By calculation we know there are altogether 216,000 Jus and ancient Chinese people hope that 216,000 Jus can imitate most part of situation in this practical world.

This is one of the most typical characteristics of Dunjia. In ancient age, those who won using Dunjia tried to keep it as top-secret, and suppressed Dunjia-masters to prevent from Dunjia-secret leaking to the enemies of the governors.

Many Dunjia-masters were arrested, but they’d never made the secret of Dunjia clear.

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Basic Background

1. Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams
1-1. Hevenly Stems

Most people are familair with Heavenly Stems, there are Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui. For Western people, they may feel difficult to understand the meaning and remember them. In fact, ten Heavenly Stems have close connection with the movements of sun. It was heard that Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches were created by Da Nao, a very mysterious figure in ancient China.The following lists the general meaning of ten Heavenly Stems:

1. Jia: Bud – the sign of growth
2. Yi: Sprout – the spread of growth, bursting forth from Earth
3. Bing: Concentrated growth like fire in the house
4. Ding: Maturity, solidity, Heavens kiss.
5. Wu; Flourishing and nuturing
6. Ji: Full bloom
7. Geng: Harvesting and abundance. Fullness leading to changes
8. Xin: Dead heading, reformation
9. Ren: Sustenance, supporting life
10. Gui: Regenerating roots and preparation for spring

In terms of Five Elements attributes, ten Heavenly Stems fall in to the following category:

Chinese Character	Pin Yin	Five Element Attributes	Yin Yang Attributes
	Jia(HS01)	wood	yang
	Yi(HS02)	wood	yin
	Bing(HS03)	fire	yang
	Ding(HS04)	fire	yin
	Wu(HS05)	earth	yang
	Ji(HS06)	earth	yin
	Geng(HS07)	metal	yang
	Xin(HS08)	metal	yin
	Ren(HS09)	water	yang
	Gui(HS10)	water	yin

1-2. Earthly Branches

Earthly Branches have close connection with the movements of moon. They are described as follows:

1. Zi: Young shoot of a plant
2. Chou: Young plant supported by stick
3. Yin: Celebration of spring and New Year
4. Mao: Life springing forth
5. Chen: Pregnant and timid
6. Si: 7 months pregnant with fully formed embryo
7. Wu: Summer solstice
8. Wei: Big tree with solid branches
9. Shen:Expansion
10. You: Harvest, celebration
11. Xu: Clearing and preparation
12. Hai: Conception, mating of yin and yang

In terms of Five Elements attributes, ten Earthly Branches fall in to the following category:

	Zi(EB01)	water	yang
	Chou(EB02)	earth	yin
	Yin(EB03)	wood	yang
	Mao(EB04)	wood	yin
	Chen(EB05)	earth	yang
	Si(EB06)	fire	yin
	Wu(EB07)	fire	yang
	Wei(EB08)	earth	yin
	Shen(EB09)	metal	yang
	You(EB10)	metal	yin
	Xu(EB11)	earth	yang
	Hai(EB12)	water	yin

1-3. Orientation Attributes for Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches

Orientation	Season	Heavenly Stems	Earthly Branches
East	Spring	Jia, Yi	Yin, Mou
South	Summer	Bing, Ding	Si, Wu
Center	End of each four seasons	Wu, Ji	Chen, Xu, Chou, Wei
West	Autumn	Geng, Xin	Shen, You
North	Winter	Ren, Gui	Hai, Zi

1-4. The application of ten Heavenly Stems in Dunjia
Besides the time meaning represented by the ten Heavenly Stems, each Heavenly Stem has hidden meaning which denotes the personalized military force. Jia denotes the general who often hides in the military force arrangements. Just on account of this it is called Dunjia–Dun means hidden in Chinese, Jia indicates the first Heavenly Stem Jia. Yi, Bing and Ding are often called Three Wonders. In fact, they are three important assistant commanders close to the general. In modern military framework, they are similiar to the headquater, political department and logistic department. Sometimes we can understand them as the following below: Yi is the idea man, Bing is the general’s bodyguard, and Ding is the logistic officer.

Sometimes we can regard the three as the arm forces often appearing suddenly.

Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui are six detachments (We call Liu Yi), each holding up flag of different color.
Wu, earth element, yang, holds up a just-yellow flag
Ji, earth element, yin, holds up a deputy-yellow flag
Geng, metal element, yang, holds up a just-white flag
Xin, metal element, yin, holds up a deputy-white flag
Ren, water element, yang, holds up a just-black flag
Gui, water element, yin, holds up a deputy-black flag.

In the sixty Stems and Branches system, Heavenly Stems will repeat six times while the Earthly Branches repeat 5 times, forming sixty combinations as follow below:

Jia-Zi	Jia-Xu	Jia-Shen	Jia-Wu	Jia-Chen	Jia-Yin
Yi-Chou	Yi-Hai	Yi-You	Yi-Wei	Yi-Si	Yi-Mou
Bing-Yin	Bing-Zi	Bing-Xu	Bing-Shen	Bing-Wu	Bing-Chen
Ding-Mou	Ding-Chou	Ding-Hai	Ding-You	Ding-Wei	Ding-Si
Wu-Chen	Wu-Yin	Wu-Zi	Wu-Xu	Wu-Shen	Wu(HS05)-Wu(EB07)
Ji-Si	Ji-Mou	Ji-Chou	Ji-Hai	Ji-You	Ji-Wei
Geng-Wu	Geng-Chen	Geng-Yin	Geng-Zi	Geng-Xu	Geng-Shen
Xin-Wei	Xin-Si	Xin-Mou	Xin-Chou	Xin-Hai	Xin-You
Ren-Shen	Ren-Wu	Ren-Chen	Ren-Yin	Ren-Zi	Ren-Xu
Gui-You	Gui-Wei	Gui-Si	Gui-Mou	Gui-Chou	Gui-Hai

So, ancient Chinese people regard sixty years as one cycle. In one cycle Jia should appear six times, they are Jia-Zi, Jia-Xu, Jia-Shen, Jia-Wu, Jia-Chen and Jia-Yin. In them the Jia-Zi is the general, the other five are commenders. The six military officers should hide themselves each under a different flag and they should not change anyway.

Jia-Zi hides under the just-yellow flag holding up by Wu
Jia-Xu hides under the deputy-yellow flag holding up by Ji
Jia-Shen hides under the just-white flag holding up by Geng
Jia-Wu hides under the deputy-white flag holding up by Xin
Jia-Chen hides under the just-black flag holding up by Ren
Jia-Yin hides under the deputy-black flag holding up by Gui

1-5. Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams.
Nine Palaces derive from Luo Drawings. To fill in the numbers we can get the following chart imitating Luo Drawing:

4,	9,	2,
3,	5,	7,
8,	1,	6,

For the easy memory, we often recite them as: 9 up on the head and 1 down under my feet, left 3 and right 7, 4 and 2 on my shoulder, 8 and 6 are my feet. Correspondingly, the congenital Eight Trigrams occupy diferent palaces.

1-6. San Qi
San Qi means three high-valued wonderful commanders or enforcements and consists of (sun wonder), (Moon wonder) and (star wonder).

1-7 Liu Yi
Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren and Gui are six detachments (We call Liu Yi), each holding up flag of different color, under which six Jia-Zi, Jia-Xu, Jia-Shen, Jia-Wu, Jia-Chen and Jia-Yin hide them.
Wu, earth element, yang, holds up a just-yellow flag
Ji, earth element, yin, holds up a deputy-yellow flag
Geng, metal element, yang, holds up a just-white flag
Xin, metal element, yin, holds up a deputy-white flag
Ren, water element, yang, holds up a just-black flag
Gui, water element, yin, holds up a deputy-black flag.

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